How to Practice Meticulous Attention & Increase Your Attention Span
Do you know whenever we complete a good number of our tasks why we believe we haven’t been able to deliver the best job? That usually occurs because we fail to provide our complete attention to the task. It is a common problem that each and every one of us face on a daily basis.
As far as the cause is concerned, it can range from being distracted by our friends & colleagues and can extend as much as up to multi-tasking or opening multiple browsers while working on our screen.
To top it all off, we now have social media which takes away a great chunk of our attention.
It’s not just about you or a particular audience type, getting distracted from the important task is a common concern that each and every one of us have to face. Giving partial attention to the task at hand has some real detrimental impact, and as per how it impacts our lives?
- Whenever we start something, we never get the chance to make ourselves completely absorbed in the task. As a result, we fail to provide the maximum attention or our complete devotion to achieve them.
- Our minds stay fatigued, we stay anxious, and stress never allows us to completely give our best to what we do. Without inner peace, you can’t expect to deliver your best to just about anything you do.
- By not giving our complete attention to the task, we simply curtail down our chances of completely creating a full-connection with the job we are performing. Hence, we fail to create an emotional bond.
- We usually turn towards listening to podcasts or music to evade from distractions but in fact, we only result in creating a lot more because we start lacking in mindfulness and our attention shifts to leisure.
These are just some of the things that we do which trashes our experience in just about everything. It’s what I call the fracturing of attention, and when it happens we don’t even realize how we are impairing our well beings. We fail to create emotional bonds with the tasks we wish to perform and eventually it costs us a great deal of our happiness. We clearly miss out on the full appreciation of life.
If you’re failing to give full attention to your tasks, then you’re missing out on meticulous attention.
What is Meticulous Attention?
It is the art of getting into the gist of things. The absolute attention that cuts you off from all your surroundings and allows you to give a high-end focus at achieving the tasks that you wish to perform. It is a way of cutting out all the unnecessary sounds in the background, cutting down all distractions and having absolute concentration on the tasks so you can deliver maximum performance on it.
What Happens When You Give Meticulous Attention to a Certain Task?
When you plan on giving your meticulous attention to a particular task or a person, it’s basically like paying attention to the task or the person with every ounce of focus that you have. You not only focus on them, but you also show them devotion and love. For example, what if you plan on having a cup of coffee and while doing so, you want to make sure that you can enjoy the moment? With meticulous attention, you can savor every single sip, feel its warmth on your tongue, the bitter taste of coffee amalgamating with the sweet essence of sugar and the burst of energy you get once the sip settles in.
How’d you manage to experience that? Because you gave your full attention to drinking it.
Same goes with just about everything; whether it’s a TV show that you watch occasionally or it’s a book that you prefer to read, by giving your absolute focus and attention, you can churn out the best.
Also, when you pay meticulous attention to something, the thought and moment simply etches into your memory. Even when you’re alone, such as now in Quarantine, you can visualize it. For example, people who can’t travel right now can imagine their best moments in some other country where they paid meticulous attention to details. Isn’t recalling that moment fun and enthralling? I believe it is.
Now just imagine, what if you can absorb that essence in everything you do? From talking to your friends, to writing an email, from completing your office tasks to playing your favorite games, you can get the gist of just about everything. At the same time, you can also empower your mind with the right positive energy and guess what, whatever you do now, simply maximizes on perfection. Isn’t a perfect world a desire that everyone of us crave, and what happens when we reach that level of perfection?
We grow.
How to Practice Meticulous Attention?
Now, if you want to be meticulously attentive, here are a few steps on how you can become one.
- Try to notice each thing that you’re doing as a distinct event. Not just a bunch of things blurred together, but a separate thing. You open a browser tab, that’s a distinct action. You talk to someone, that’s separate from anything else you might be doing.
- For each distinct action or event, ask yourself what you can do to give it your full, meticulous attention. Do you need to close other tabs? Go into fullscreen mode for a writing app? Close other apps? Turn off your phone? Write in a notebook? Turn your body fully toward the person asking for your attention?
- Give the task, action, person or moment your undivided attention. Notice what this is like for you. See if you can deepen your attention even more. Let go of thoughts about the future and past, if possible, and turn toward what you’re facing even more. Open your heart to whatever or whoever is in front of you. See this action or conversation as an act of devotion.
And that’s the only practice that you need to develop in order to become meticulously attentive.
Isn’t that simple? You may find yourself slipping back to your old habits but that’s not a problem. We all can slip into our old habits time and time again. It’s the continuous practice that will get us through.
So how was the article? Did you find it informative? What steps are you planning to take in order to become meticulously attentive? Feel free to share your views with us in the comments below.
